Pole Position

TYRE-SOME IMPORT (do you see?) drawn in that crappy style of the time whereby everyone had massive eyeballs, triangular mouths and “moved” by virtue of standing still while the background maniacally juddered out of focus. Laughably based on the popular Atari game effort. Two crimefighting siblings utilised their racing cars to, er, “fight crime”. Tess and Dan adopted the titular responsibilities, while typical big-pupilled cute girl, Daisy, daughter of their “chief” (whoever he was) got kidnapped at least once an episode. Plus, in yet another mid-80s giveaway, there was a crappy animal comedy sidekick, in this case a monkey thing calle Kuma.

Pedantic clarification of family relationships: Daisy was Tess and Dan’s little sister, and their chief was their uncle, hence the “Only their uncle knows!” lyric in the theme song. Oh, and the crappy unidentified pet was supposed to be a genetically engineered combo of various animals, that’s why it looks like neither one thing nor t’other.

One of this cartoon’s writer was future sitcom bigwig Chuck Lorre (“Grace Under Fire,” “Cybill,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Two And A Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and all those different Chuck Lorre Productions cards at the end of the last three). I doubt this is high on his CV.